Demographics of "white flighters"

[darklordoftech]

What religion, income, education level, job, etc. were the whites who participated in "white flight"?

[bagelman]

They were mostly white.

[Not a Partisan Hack ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)]

They were mostly white.

WHITES WHITES WHITES WHITES WHITES WHITES WHITES WHITES THAT PERSON WHO ISNT WHITE

[Pennsylvania Deplorable]

Basically all groups of whites regardless of political affiliation, white/blue collar, etc have engaged in white flight. It seems to be most pronounced immediately before or after a white couple has children. They'll almost never explicitly say it's racial, but we all know what "I want my children to grow up in safer neighborhoods and go to nicer schools"  means in practice.

Generally, the only ones who don't are those too poor to afford a home in the suburbs or a nice part of the city. From working at a soup kitchen in an inner city, I can tell you almost all the white people there were elderly (easily a 30 year difference in average age vs blacks and Hispanics there) and often disabled so social security was likely their sole source of income.

[jimrtex]

Basically all groups of whites regardless of political affiliation, white/blue collar, etc have engaged in white flight. It seems to be most pronounced immediately before or after a white couple has children. They'll almost never explicitly say it's racial, but we all know what "I want my children to grow up in safer neighborhoods and go to nicer schools"  means in practice.

It means exactly what it says.

When they are single, they don't mind stepping over drunks when going to clubs. The non-conforming bar with the occasional knifing is not so bothersome, as it is when the loud noises at 2 am are waking up the baby.

They need more bedrooms, and want a yard, and a garage. These are unaffordable in the city, particularly if a wife is going to be cutting back on her work.

[darklordoftech]

My impression is that "white-flighters" tended to be religious Catholics, well-off financially, not-college-educated, and factory workers. This would explain why pro-life politics and Willie Horton ads would appeal to the same voters and why they ended up becoming Trump supporters.

[bagelman]

I'd say they're more white collar than blue collar.

[King of Kensington]

I think it depends on when.  I think middle class and Jewish white flight occurred earlier on average than working class and Catholic.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Middle to upper income.

[Kamala's side hoe]

My impression is that "white-flighters" tended to be religious Catholics, well-off financially, not-college-educated, and factory workers. This would explain why pro-life politics and Willie Horton ads would appeal to the same voters and why they ended up becoming Trump supporters.

These are the people who are most often stereotyped as and probably more readily identify as white flighters, than say college-educated and upscale white liberals who are scared of admitting to their latent racial prejudice.

[SingingAnalyst]

My impression is that "white-flighters" tended to be religious Catholics, well-off financially, not-college-educated, and factory workers. This would explain why pro-life politics and Willie Horton ads would appeal to the same voters and why they ended up becoming Trump supporters.

These are the people who are most often stereotyped as and probably more readily identify as white flighters, than say college-educated and upscale white liberals who are scared of admitting to their latent racial prejudice.

For six days in late July, 1967, large parts of Detroit were ablaze. My parents remember hearing the uprising from our house at night when I was an infant, and armed National Guard vehicles going up and down our street.

In 1970, my parents moved my sister and me out of northwest Detroit into northern Sterling Heights in Macomb County.  The racial balance of Detroit was rapidly changing.  The previous November, Richard Austin narrowly lost the Detroit mayoral race to Roman Gribbs.  Four years later, after a considerable number of whites had moved out of Detroit, Coleman A. Young was elected mayor, probably with a much smaller percentage of the white vote than had voted for Austin.

After Young was elected mayor, white flight accelerated. Homes near my elementary school could not go up fast enough; homes replaced farmland all over Sterling Heights. It seemed at one point like almost every week a new family, typically of Polish, Italian, or Appalachian descent, would move from Detroit's eastside into our neighborhood and elementary school.

Who else were the whites who moved out of Detroit from 1967 to well into the 1990s? In 2012, I attended the play "Palmer Park", named after the Detroit neighborhood (itself a hotbed of white flight, going from 65% white in 1980 to 13% white in 1990). During the talk-back after the play, one man in the audience said that, after the 1967 uprising, his family moved him from Detroit Mumford High School (which had a significant Jewish population in the 1950s and 1960s, and which has been largely Black since then) to Birmingham Seaholm High School (in the tony suburb along the Woodward corridor in Oakland County).

So, while the stereotypical white-flighter might be a working-class Catholic family, the phenomenon cuts across many demographic groups.  Nationally, the "typical" white-flighter probably voted for Nixon in '68, but in Macomb County, Humphrey was the clear winner (with a significant minority going for Wallace; by 1972, however, all Democratic bets were off in Macomb County, thanks to the busing issue).

[darklordoftech]

My impression is that "white-flighters" tended to be religious Catholics, well-off financially, not-college-educated, and factory workers. This would explain why pro-life politics and Willie Horton ads would appeal to the same voters and why they ended up becoming Trump supporters.

These are the people who are most often stereotyped as and probably more readily identify as white flighters, than say college-educated and upscale white liberals who are scared of admitting to their latent racial prejudice.

What I had in mind was people who's voting was shaped by their "white fleeing". The Presidential candidates who tried to appeal to "white flighters" tended to also be pro-life, hawkish, and anti-amnesty, so I figured that "white flighters" tended to have those views, and drew conclusions about their demographics from that. For example, a Jewish lawyer with a graduate school degree would probably be anti-war, pro-amnesty, and pro-choice while a Catholic factory worker who never went to college would likely be pro-war, anti-amnesty, and pro-life.

[kcguy]

Basically all groups of whites regardless of political affiliation, white/blue collar, etc have engaged in white flight. It seems to be most pronounced immediately before or after a white couple has children. They'll almost never explicitly say it's racial, but we all know what "I want my children to grow up in safer neighborhoods and go to nicer schools"  means in practice.

Along these lines. . .

Before I moved closer to work, I lived in a school district on the edge of the city with interesting demographics.  The overall population of the district was about 2/3 white, but the school-age population was about 1/3 white.  I've heard that one of the four elementary schools had a predominantly white student body, but they tended not to go on to the district's only high school.

On a different topic. . .

Has anyone noticed a rise in the homeless population?  There's an intersection near my house here in the 'burbs that I drive through on the way home from work.  I'm noticing a lot of homeless people begging for money, and I don't remember that a year ago.  Considering that our economy is probably at its healthiest since 2000, I'm a little suspicious.

[Unapologetic Chinaperson]

On a different topic. . .

Has anyone noticed a rise in the homeless population?  There's an intersection near my house here in the 'burbs that I drive through on the way home from work.  I'm noticing a lot of homeless people begging for money, and I don't remember that a year ago.  Considering that our economy is probably at its healthiest since 2000, I'm a little suspicious.

I bet it's increasing as a result of increasing cost of living (especially housing), plus the opioid epidemic.

[Indy Texas]

Middle to upper income.

I would think upper income people would be less likely to do this precisely because their neighborhoods were less likely to be impinged on by non-white residents, being too expensive for most nonwhites to afford.

High-income urban/inner-suburban areas (so-called "favored quarters") tend to remain consistently white.

The stereotypical example of white flight would be a neighborhood catering to working- and middle-class whites who often moved there during and immediately after World War II. And then following the passage of anti-discrimination laws for housing and desegregation for schools in the late 1960s, nonwhite (black) families were able to purchase houses there, prompting the original white inhabitants to leave, often for further-out suburbs and exurbs.

In a 1960s New York City context, the John Lindsay voters would be the affluent white people whose neighborhoods are too expensive for nonwhites; the Marchi and Procaccino voters would be the working- and middle-class white people who have black people moving into their neighborhoods and don't like it.